Coy Ross

Forklift service technicians and their customers are benefiting from training programs such as the UniCarriers Americas Corp's college of technical services.

Coy Ross with dealership Quality Lift Trucks in Chula Vista, California is the college's first certified apprentice technician in May 2012. Ross participated largely through online classes and visited the UniCarriers headquarters in Marengo for some training. Quality Lift Trucks employs 11 technicians in Chula Vista and represents Doosan and Big Joe in addition to UniCarriers' brands Nissan and Barrett.

Ross explains his motivation: "I want to eventually become a dealer trainer, but I always want to be a better tech and the go-to person when someone needs help. I've been able to reduce the time it takes me to complete a repair because I'm well trained. Beyond that, I think that training programs like this one are important to show that the technicians and the dealership are working hard to be the best."

Seventeen of 24 technicians at the Sunbelt Industrial Trucks unit of SBNA Holdings Inc in Dallas have achieved apprentice certification through the UniCarriers' college. Sunbelt added the Nissan line in November 2011 and continues to represent the Komatsu, Big Joe, Flexi, JLG and Genie brands.

In getting up to speed on Nissan technology, "we needed to get all of our technicians trained on the models as soon as we could", says George Munford, Sunbelt vice president of operations.

Paul Pack oversees the program as Sunbelt corporate trainer.

Monthly, Sunbelt trains technicians in classes of two to three days.

"We ended up doubling our expected investment in training for 2012 when we got our staff involved in the university," Munford says. "I've been in the forklift industry at the dealer level for more than 20 years, and the University of Nissan Forklift [now UniCarriers] training program is the most comprehensive training program that I've seen."

Munford says Sunbelt looks forward to having new technicians start working toward the apprentice level as well as having some of its staff reach the journeyman certification.

UniCarriers Americas has more than 235 authorised dealerships with 350 locations in North, Central and South America and is a unit of parent company UniCarriers Holdings Corp of Tokyo. UniCarriers Holdings is integrating and merging the operations of the Nissan, Barrett and TCM forklift brands and moving toward use of a unified UniCarriers forklift identification.

Units of UniCarriers Holdings in other regions offer technical training, but UniCarriers Americas believes that the level of its college of technical services exceeds programs in other locales. Josh Landreman is manager of service and training for the UniCarriers Americas' college.

The state-of-the-art UniCarriers Americas' educational platform was launched in January 2012, originally as the University of Nissan Forklift.